HERBERT MARCUSE AND THE TOLERANCE OF REPRESSION

Leftists are OK with this because of books they haven't read.

by Keith Preston

“I am not bound to defend liberal notions of tolerance.” –Left-wing anarchist activist to the author

The rise of the New Left is typically considered to have its origins in the student rebellions of the late 1960s and early 1970s when the war in Vietnam was at its height and cultural transformation was taking place in Western countries with dizzying rapidity. Yet scholars have long recognized that the intellectual roots of the New Left were created several decades earlier through the efforts of the thinkers associated with the Institute for Social Research (commonly known as the “Frankfurt School”) to reconsider the essence of Marxist theory following the failure of the working classes of Western Europe to produce a socialist revolution as orthodox Marxism had predicted.

CREEPING CARNIVALISM

by Alex Fontana

The following passage, describing the failure of the New Left in the 1960s and 70s, has a lot of relevance for our own movement:

"Ironically, just when the New Left was experiencing an unprecedented wave of support, its leading organization, SDS, which claimed almost a hundred thousand members and a million supporters, was being torn asunder by internal contradictions. Chapter meetings throughout the country degenerated into ideological squabbles as the Progressive Labor party (PL), a disciplined Old Left cadre, made a power play and tried to take over the SDS. The PL people were cultural conservatives; they wore their hair short, dressed straight, mouthed Marxist dogma, and dismissed lifestyle as a peripheral concern that diverted attention from the true working-class struggle. On repeated occasions PL castigated SDS regulars for being ‘escapist’ and ‘objectively counterrevolutionary when they spoke in favor of turning on. (Quite a few SDS members would have agreed with Arthur Kleps when he said, ‘Marxism is the opiate of the unstoned classes.’) PL also criticized propaganda tactics like guerrilla theater and rock bands at rallies as ‘creeping carnivalism,’ and they even claimed that Timothy Leary was a CIA agent who pushed acid on the Movement as part of an imperialist plot." (Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: the CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond by Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain)

PALE PRIESTS, DARK FIGHTERS

by Henry Dampier

I’ve spilled a number of pixels already on the political dynamic that’s been at work in some of the urban riots over the last year or two. My observations aren’t particularly unique on this topic, either.

One of the interesting dynamics at work is that many of the radial leftists in print, at websites, and on TV have tended to put more hopes into these protests than the facts themselves would warrant. Characters like Matt Bruenig, the rest of the staff at Gawker, the new staff at the New Republic, some choice Atlantic columnists, and others from more radical venues like Jacobin, have all downplayed some of their more characteristic cultural and economic issues for whatever grievance at the moment is being wailed about by the urban protest machine.

GOD, MAKE GREECE GOOD BUT NOT YET

Beware Greeks bearing debts: Yanis Varoufakis

by Colin Liddell

The Guardian has just published a long, rambling article by the man of the moment, the Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, entitled "How I became an erratic Marxist."

The article, which is adapted from a lecture originally delivered at the 6th Subversive Festival in Zagreb in 2013, shows the confused, ambivalent, blind, and downright dishonest tendencies of the modern Left. It also gives a good insight into how the Left in Greece and other countries will seek to deal with the developing economic crisis.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING TOLERABLE

Thoughts on the shooting in France and multicultural stupidity

by Dota

Throughout my years in elementary school I felt that certain teachers harboured unwarranted prejudice against me. I’d complain to my parents and my Dad’s response was fairly consistent: “What have you been up to?” My Mother’s response was somewhat more sympathetic: “Why don’t they like you? You’re so likable!” Both of their responses subtly implied that the way people treat you is a function of your own behaviour toward them. I have mentioned numerous times that the West needs to embrace this virtue of reciprocity. The virtue of tolerance that was championed by the Old Left of John Stuart Mill has been degraded by the modern left. In his essay On Liberty Mill championed a diversity of opinions (NOT a diversity of races) while placing one sole limit on free speech: using it to incite a mob.

CHILD ABUSE AS A “NEW DIVISIONIST” TACTIC OF WESTERN ELITES

by Colin Liddell

You’ll have seen the now ubiquitous F-Bombs for Feminism video that has predictably gone viral – yawn! – and is now quickly swishing its way round the amnesia U-bend of the great internet toilet.

It was designed to get a lot of attention by triggering people and of course it has. Congrats to whichever low-rent genius conceived it (probably a guy BTW).

The central message is the usual feminist bundle of crap that women should be paid more than they deserve (the unequal pay thing is a myth) and be allowed to behave any way they want (i.e. dress like tramps and go out and get stoned and pissed) and still have the most feral elements of the male population respect them. This last point may be more of a race issue than a gender issue, but don’t go there.

THE DEATH MORALITY OF THE LEFT

Leftists: self abnegating and selfish at the same time.

by Colin Liddell

One of the chief characteristics of modernity is a departure from traditional morality, but merely deviating from such morality does not mean the abnegation of that morality, which is founded on eternal truths. Rather it is a form of negative affirmation of that morality. Therefore we should not be surprised that such deviation creates a strong sense of moral inferiority among those who choose that path, and thus impels a desperate need to offset it and reset the moral balance.

This simple psychological equation can be used to explain much of what we see in Leftism and why the extreme Left tends to attract the viler kinds of human being.